In the mid 80’s I lived with six people in a share house in Jackson St. We regularly had house guests. Julia, a beautiful, gentle woman, was visiting from Germany.

One night as I lay sleeping she burst into my room. She had been walking on St Kilda beach and had been raped.

The next day her throat looked terrible. Black bruises. That’s how he had held her down.

‘Carolyn’ she said, ‘ if it had been you, you would have been alright. You would have been able to scream’ . ‘But’, I said ‘he would have held me down by my hair’.

That next night I couldn’t sleep. I reconfigured all the furniture in my room and finally slept.

A week later I went to the hairdresser.
Hack, hack, hack.

The first shower was exquisite. Without this blanket of hair my scalp and neck luxuriated in the new sensation of water directly touching my skin.
Carolyn Connors — Balaclava

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